How 90 minutes of panic and fear unfolded as rampage which killed three leaves Nottingham in shock

The horror began with “terrible bloodcurdling screams” just after 4am when two students walking home from a nightclub were ambushed by a black-clad assailant.

The hooded knifeman hacked into the helpless 19-year-olds, who were just five minutes away from their quarters and targeted seemingly at random.

One witness recalled, ‘Because it was a hot night, I had the window open and I heard a terrible, blood-curdling scream. I looked out the window and saw a black man dressed all in black, with a hood and a backpack, struggling with some people. It was a girl and a man she was with.

She screamed “Help!” I saw him stab the boy first and then the woman. It was repeated stabbing – four or five times.

The boy collapsed in the middle of the road. The girl stumbled to a house and did not move. The next moment she had disappeared down the side of a house and that’s where they found her.’

Speaking to the BBC, the witness added: ‘The attacker then simply walked up Ilkeston Road towards the town, calm as anything.’

Paramedics tried unsuccessfully for 40 minutes to revive the couple, dubbed locally as Grace Kumar and Barnaby Webber, but were unable to save their lives. Within an hour another victim had been stabbed to death, a man in his fifties on Magdala Road, about a mile and a half away.

Police now believe the knifeman stole this second man’s white van and then drove through Nottingham, determined to cause a massacre. Police are investigating whether the van was spotted or whether the driver was attacked when he got in.

At around 5:30 a.m., screams erupted as a woman made the grim discovery of the bloodied body of the van’s owner in the street near Magdala Tennis Club. Delivery driver Miklos Toldi, 37, and his wife Petra were in their car on their way to work. They live only 100 meters away and stopped at the same time as another motorist.

Mr Toldi, a Hungarian national, said he saw the body lying in the street with stab wounds and added: ‘Blood was pouring down the road. The blood looked like it was fresh. He was lying on his side, his mouth was open and there was no movement.’

Mr Toldi said it took police just two to three minutes to arrive on the scene after a 999 call. Another local resident recalls hearing a ‘loud bang’.

Bibi Garbutt, 85, a former opera singer, said: ‘At 5.30am there was a loud bang that woke me up. It sounded like an explosion, I thought it was a bomb going off.

‘I went to my balcony in my dressing gown and heard someone running but saw nothing and went back inside. I was scared.’ By now, Nottingham Police frantically tried to keep up with the horror as they rushed to multiple incidents and calls came in from all over the city.

On Milton Street in the city centre, outside the Theater Royal, the nine-year-old Vauxhall van was used to mow down pedestrians at a bus stop, also at around 5:30am.

Witness Lynn Haggitt apparently saw the driver speeding up and hitting people.

She told the BBC: ‘He looked in his mirror, saw a police car behind him and then accelerated.

“There were two people, two in the corner – he went straight for these two people. The woman went up to the curb, the man went up into the air – there was such a bang. I wish I had never seen it, it really shocked me.

“The woman was sitting on the curb, she looked fine.

“The man lay down, but then he got up, sat down to the side, waiting for an ambulance. I can’t believe he was able to get up after the head wound.”

Another witness, Frances, told Sky News that she had just got off a bus with about 40 others and ‘suddenly you heard a bang that sounded like a vehicle hitting a traffic bollard’.

She added: “I turned around and then saw the two people on the road. Someone yelled.’

When asked if she thought the collision was intentional, Ms. Haggitt, who works at a B&Q store, said: “He didn’t even bother to turn – he just went right back into it.” She described the van driver as someone with dreadlocks, a beard and a hat.

A third pedestrian was also hit and all three were taken to hospital. One of them, a man, was in critical condition last night, and the other two had minor injuries, police said.

According to witnesses, police gave chase to the white van as it drove out of the city center.

About a mile to the north, at the corner of Maples Street and Bentinck Road, the van — dented and with a cracked pedestrian windshield — came to a stop and armed police fired Tasers at the driver.

Dramatic video showed two officers pinning him to the sidewalk. Witness Grace Mambi said officers yelled, “Get down, get down!” Demi Ojolow, a student who lives down the street, said: ‘They dragged him out of the car and he just fell to the ground. He was still struggling quite a bit at the time.’

Neighbor Dimitrious Lawani added: “He was quite resistive – very resistive from what I could tell – and he made a lot of noise, too, but I couldn’t really make out what he was saying.”

Kane Brady, a student from the University of Nottingham, told GB News: ‘We woke up to shouts of ‘armed police’ and what sounded like some really loud noises, what sounded like gunshots – it was that loud.

“I looked out the bedroom window and saw Tasers. I saw a man being dragged out and pinned to the ground. I saw him get arrested, he tried to resist. I saw later when they opened the van – I saw a big knife being pulled out and then the police immediately closed both roads.’

Fearing that a marauding terror attack was underway, armed police officers from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire swarmed into the town centre.

Parts of the city were shut down with road closures, tram and train services canceled and police cordons on roads in the center and northern suburbs.

Ambulances, fire engines and specialist officers dressed in body armor and helmets flooded the area along with National Inter-Agency Liaison Officers dressed in burgundy uniforms, part of an elite force raised in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Uniformed officers knocked on doors and requested CCTV footage as squads of heavily armed officers stormed into several addresses in Ilkeston Road. Neighbors of one of the properties searched said officers broke down the door and repeatedly asked two students if they knew a black man who lived at the address.

Bella Crawshaw, 20, a freshman computer science student, said officers asked her if she was “hanging out” with a black man from the address. She said: ‘We know our social groups and we know who comes into our house.

“Even the people we’re with, they’re very like ‘don’t do drugs, don’t hang out with the wrong people and stuff.'”

Last night, the investigation into the rampage pivoted away from a suspected terror attack to the mental health of the suspect.

The 31-year-old who is being questioned about the three deaths and injuries to three others is said to have no previous criminal history.

What led to the attacks remained a mystery. According to sources, the suspect in custody is an immigrant of West African descent. He is neither a British citizen nor an asylum seeker.

Due to the chaotic and random nature of the rampage, anti-terror agents had traveled to Nottingham to assist with the investigation, but backed off when the facts became clearer.

It is not known whether the police have already been able to question the suspect.

It is likely that he required a psychiatric evaluation before being questioned about the incident.

A team of detectives yesterday investigated his background and spoke to friends and family to establish the full facts of the horrific attack that has left the city in a state of shock.

No other arrests have been made and police said they were not looking for anyone else.